White Paper
June 1, 2018, 5:19 PM EDT
Author
Shub Rakshit
Contributors
Sanjay Sidhwani
Sue Yasav
Abstract:
To succeed long term, it’s more important than ever that retailers create the best customer experience possible. Gartner finds that expectations are growing as to the importance of CX as a competitive advantage. “Today, slightly more than two-thirds of marketers responsible for CX say their companies compete on the basis of CX.”1
Fortunately, the exponential growth in data and digital tools have made it easier for companies to create a better customer experience, drive sales, and increase loyalty. Data mining and journey analytics are used to identify and understand customers’ needs and behaviors. To gain a market edge, successful companies are using both analytics and technology to turn raw data into meaningful actions throughout their customers’ lifecycles.
The following pages outline how companies can leverage data to uncover valuable details about their customers. In addition, mapping the customer journey and strategically structuring the data can also reveal actionable insights that can be used to improve the customer experience across all touchpoints.
Table of Contents
Harmonizing data across touchpoints
Retailers not only have access to traditional structured data, such as transactions and responses to sales promotions, but also to newer forms of unstructured data, such as consumer reviews, permission-based online and real-time mobile information. All this data provides the opportunity for insights into a customer’s communication and purchase preferences.
Mapping the customer journey
Collecting and organizing customer data is foundational to optimizing the customer experience. From the data, we can start to build the full 360-degree view of our customers’ demographics, shopping and spending patterns, online browsing habits, and preferences.
Creating the Optimal Customer Experience
While data is the core input, the analytics provide the learnings and insights to enable the technology to implement the appropriate actions. From computers to mobile devices to artificial intelligence, a wide range of everyday technologies can be deployed to interact with the customer at the right time, on the right channel, with the right message.
Conclusion
Data lake technology can help companies by integrating the data and providing a robust suite of tools to quickly develop advanced analytic models. These models can be integrated into the customer journey to drive better experiences and create more engaged customers.
There are millions of data points available to companies today. The value of customer data is realized when retailers seamlessly integrate the information to drive an enhanced customer experience